He asked how my breasts are enhanced, if it was hormones or implants. A valid question, but it stung. I mean, duh, of course he knew I wasn’t a genetic girl. Had I not seen him playing with a tranny last time? Yes. Clearly, it was no problem for him; in fact, there was a good chance that it was a turn-on. Part of what I’d read aloud earlier in the evening was about, among other things, not being ashamed or embarrassed of being a tranny. And I wasn’t feeling ashamed or embarrassed now; I simply hadn’t wanted it to be an issue. Sometimes I just want to be regarded as female, something straight men often have difficulty grasping.

Between the back-to-back opening of the Vash's play and the aforementioned show, Friday was a predictably late night. Vash and I didn't get back to my place until around two in the morning, and we didn't really get mobile again until well past noon, uncharacteristically late for a pair of morning people such as ourselves. A series of bad dreams propelled me out of bed before her, though, as is usually the case when I sleep during daylight hours. We eventually went to Kiki's for an early afternoon sushi breakfast. As lip service to my alleged attempt to get into shape, I did not order a side of miso dressing for my rice. Or even the rice.

Although the Alternative Press Expo was in town, we instead decided to go on an impromptu tour of SOMA leather shops—Leather Etc., A Taste of Leather, and Madame S. At the latter we ran into the director of Vash's play (I took the high road), which really wasn't a surprise at all. I was an unsuccessful hunt for Trinity pants, though it's probably just as well, since I wouldn't have bought them even if I did find them in my size. But that particular shopping bug is out of my system for the time being.

My original plan had been to spend the evening at home, working on my Twilight Zone script and/or generally loafing (probably the latter), but as the afternoon wore on I found the idea of being alone made me sad. Or, perhaps more accurately, the thought of not being with Vash. So, I went with her to the second night of her play. (It won't be the last for me, I suspect, as I won't get tired of watching her on stage anytime soon.) It was a good night to go, as the unfortunate absence of one of the performers resulting a retooling of Vash's part, including a monologue which hadn't been in the script since the first draft. Mi Vashita, she did a damned good job of it.

We spent the night at Wonderland, the first time I've been there in a while. Obligations brought us both back into San Francisco fairly early, a writing group meeting for her and a Tim and Roma! Show shoot for me, my first with the somewhat mysterious title of "line producer." Sadly, that is not the person who provides the cocaine. I gotta say, as boys go, Francois Sagat is actually pretty sexy in person. Afterwards, I went to the library for a few hours, finishing up Dreamcatcher, the first Stephen King book I've read in several years. I'm trying to read more fiction, and King was always a strong influence on me as a teenager. Hopefully some of it will rub off on me now.

While there, I ran into an f2m friend of mine who was showing his father around the City. Though getting the name right, is father insisted on referring to him as "she." I felt my friend's pain.

Vash picked me up from the library, and we went to The Hot Tubs. Yum. Now, we're both at the Black Light District, her crashed out on my increasingly uncomfortable futon and me trying to be productive. Like I haven't been busy enough this weekend.

Brief but annoying morning at the gym. My corner of the locker room was packed. The person with the locker below mine didn't notice that the plastic clasp from my unused fanny pack was hanging down, and closed and locked their door. Thankfully, I was able to yank the strap hard enough (ahem) to get it out. I can only imagine having to explain the situation to the subverbal kid working behind the counter. I also somehow managed to lose track of both my sports bra and my leggings, giving me a rather difficult choice: do I just say fuck it and leave, or do I go on ahead and get a little exercise wearing my bicycle shorts (potential bulge alert!) and tank top, revealing more about my body than I care to.

Both of them were fuck it options, now that I think about it. I went with the second one, getting in a few sets of crunches and about forty minutes on the crosstrainer. Five days a week and all. Two out of these past five days, I might add, I've heard both "The Sun Always Shines On T.V." by a-ha as well as "Love Shack" by the B-52s, as someone evidently starts the same damn iPod a the same damn time in the morning. (Having Fred Schneider blaring in my ears on a regular basis might make me give up sooner than any other kind of anxiety.) After I'd showered and gotten back into my regular ("street," they say) clothes, I spotted the missing leggings and bra, on the ground at the far end of the bench. Whether they'd been there since yesterday or I'd spazzed out this morning, I have no idea. I don't think I want to know.

Even if we think really hard, we can't stop this rain!

After the official premiere tonight of Vash's play (in which she kicks much ass), I'm reading at Gotham's Fantasies. The story I'm reading is one which I haven't touched since last October, but it seems appropriate. I've given it that all-important six-month rewrite. I like it a little better now. It's about another time, but it feels like it captures where I am right now.

Almost didn't go the gym this morning; Vash spent the night, and we got out of the house uncharacteristically late. By the time I got to the gym (at Vash's encouragement), it was already starting to clear out. I didn't exercise for as long as I would have liked, an hour all told, but it was nice practically having the place to myself. When I left, I should have walked to work. It's not too far, maybe a mile, and it's the first (and last) time the weather's been calm enough. Instead, I waited for a train. Which was a mistake.

See, there's a game at the fucking ballpark. Worse, there are loud baseball cretins outside our building, being cretinous and loud, as is their wont. My wont in this case would be to drop water balloons filled with urine on them, but, well, you know. No balloons.

Retool and Grind last night had a pretty decent turnout last night, with some all-too-rare new faces. The show ended up being more musical than usual, with the newcomers all doing impromptu songs, as well as demonstrating the MacGyver-eseque feat of a capo being constructed out of a pen and hair-tie. I also found myself going into hardcore flirt mode, which doesn't happen often. (No, it does not.)

Sadly, my traditional pre-show dinner at World Sausage is no longer, since they've closed. There's no justice, I tell you.

3:26pm

The dress rehearsal for Vash's play is tonight, and it opens tomorrow.

sometime after midnight

Film lore (and Ford himself) has it that on the set of the first Star Wars movie, Harrison Ford said to George Lucas something to the effect of you can write this shit, but you can't say it, in reference to the director's tongue-twisty and often incoherent dialogue.

That's all.

"Today we've finally got showers kind of ending," [meteorologist Ryan Walbrun] said. "The worst of it is now behind us, but there is more rain in the forecast. And for the foreseeable future it's not going to let up."

I've heard the global warming theories, but I'm not buying it. I'm not saying there's no such thing, just that sometimes bad weather is just bad weather. The real problem is that there's no name for the system, like El Nino or the K-word. This storm, this Unsettling, is lacking a personality.

Is it me, or does this seem like a perfect time for the earthquake to hit? At four in the morning, during a downpour? Sometimes I think The Great Overshadowing was too conveniently timed, on a Tuesday morning. I suppose it was for maximum death and impact, but I can't help thinking the chaos would have been even greater if it had been at midnight. Imagine those first six hours being in darkness.

The gym's music goes by themes, I've deduced. This morning it was the seventies, thus resulting in the peculiar mix of "Grease" from above and Coil's "Chaostrophy" in my headphones.

Five days a week, five days a week, five days a week...

I'm using an mp3-cd discman, which plays mp3s from CD-Rs. I wish there was discman which used DVD-Rs (4.7GB per!), but thanks to the iPod, that particular device was rendered moribund before it ever had a chance to exist. Dumb stupid iPod.

2:27pm

Nothing like being the subject of sex advice column to confirm one's alien status. Not me specifically, of course, but my ilk. does fantasizing about [trannies] make me gay? Don't worry, dear. You're as straight as you need to believe. The problem is that neither the language nor the culture have evolved enough to account for this particular kind of sexual attraction. Even better, thanks to xtianity (among other things, but as usual religion is most responsible for restricting social progress), "gay" is still a pejorative. Charming.

4:06pm

Though I did bring in the Candy Darling picture when I got my hair done, I've decided to flatter slash delude myself that the net result isn't too far from France Gall.

4:30pm

Everything sucks eventually.

Unsurprisingly, the both the gym and the locker clear out around nine in the morning. This probably has to do with all normal people who have to be at work by then. Advantage, me.

As I'd feared, my locker is in fact in the most densely-populated area of the room, and laws of the jungle seem to apply. I'll still be trying to keep as low a profile as possible.

Among my goals is to fit into my Trinity pants by my birthday. It's a strong motivator.

Anyway, I figured Vash would probably be in town by then, and she'd come by the party and we'd go from there—except she might not. It's always best to assume that one will be under one's own power, and since the party was close to the N-Judah line, the wisest thing would be to drive to the N so I wouldn't have to deal with transferring to the L on the way home. Sound enough logic.

So I got back into my car and drove to 48th and Kirkham, looking for a spot between Kirkham and Judah. Right off the terminal stop usually plenty of parking, like right now—east side of the street. As I parked, I noticed someone in a second-floor window across the street, watching. Man, probably in his twenties, short hair. Whatever. People sit in their windows all the time, watching the world go by. The great view is one of the few things that makes me jealous of Unimatrix Zero. (That, and Oscar and Mina live there.) The Outer Sunset doesn't offer as much observable bustle, but you work with what you have.

Since I was going places with lots of cool people, I was dressed as close to the nines as I could get get: slipdress with black half-slip peeking out from under, fishnets, full battlegear, long jacket, and top hat. Haven't worn the hat on the street much since the night of the audition, when someone said It's Boy George! as I walked to the theater. (I consider that the beginning of my current spiral.) But where I was going, it would either be rainy or sunny (or both, being San Francisco), and since I'm a 'tard I keep forgetting to make an appointment with Kaiser Vision to get new sunglasses, ergo I'm sans lunettes de soleil. Hats with brims like that are good for a little protection from the elements. Besides, I like how I look in it. I've always thought women looked sexy in top hats. Thing is, I'm thinking in terms of genetic girls (nobody would ever think Dita or Susan was male), and persist this belief that it can work on me, too. I'm like an dog who thinks he's people.

My immediate plan was to carry my hat and not put it on until I sat down on Muni, or maybe even until I exited at Montgomery Station, just to be on the safe side. For some logistical reason (or perhaps self-destructiveness), the hat was on my when I got out of the car. After a few seconds I removed it. From the window across the street I heard a laugh, and then in the most schoolyard of tones, You're A MAN, Man! Two thoughts materialized in my brain. The first was my car is so fucked—i'll return to find it battered and slashed and gutted. A nanosecond or a two later came and i'll be next. i've just heard the voice of my future basher. my lucky streak ends today.

Reflective surfaces are the friend of the paranoid, and the darkened window I was passing allowed me to see that someone else had joined the observer. More laughter. I thought about returning to the car and moving it, but no. No, no, no. If something happens to my wreck of a vehicle so be it, but I am not going to be afraid in my own neighborhood.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, even if my mood never quite recovered. The festivities were already commencing when I arrived; the ratio of participants to tourists with camera was nearly one-to-one, a startlingly low number probably owing to the uncertain weather. I recognized and briefly spoke to a few people here and there, but nobody I felt comfortable hanging with, and certainly nobody suggested I do so with them. Alone in a crowd of freaks in San Francisco? Something is very wrong with my head lately.

There were two stops along the parade route up Columbus. One was outside Caffe Trieste (which opened that day in 1956) to violate copyright law by singing "Happy Birthday". The other was the Church of Scientology, where Bishop Joey lead a cheer: gimme an L! gimme a ron! gimme a hubbard! what's that spell? bullshit! what's that spell? bullshit! what's that spell? bullshit! There were also numerous cries of hail xenu! A few of them might have even come from me.

Normally, the parade (during which I wished I'd brought a noisemaker, a yo-yo, anything) ends up at Washington Square Park. Since twenty-five out of the previous thirty days had been rainy and the park was a mudpit waiting to happen, the new destination was the paved Joe DiMaggio Playground. Other events are often held there, and set as it is about ten feet below street level (follow the link to see what it means), it offers the tourists and other Norms an excellent vantage point. No doubt it was reassuring to watch without getting too close, lest they become infected with freak cooties.

A friend who sees me fairly often commented that if someone didn't know me, they'd think that what I was wearing was in fact my St. Stupid's Day costume. Perhaps on some level it was meant as a compliment, but, um, ouch.

Later, a man carrying a pair of live chickens asked me if if he could take some pictures of me holding them. There are few circumstances in which I'll say no to my photo being taken (do you think those monthly pictures at the top of this page grow on trees, young lady?), and holding chickens certainly isn't one of them. So I removed my glasses and took the chickens. As the guy snapped the photos, he commented on both how expertly I posed (practice, practice, practice) and how good I was with the chickens (natural talent, natural talent, natural talent), saying that normally they aren't quite so mellow with strangers, especially ones holding them long as I was.

After a minute, it seemed like everyone with a camera within a ten-foot radius was taking pictures of me with the chickens, and a number of people posed with me. (Us?) One girl told me that she'd been at The Dark Room the night before, really liked the story I read, and would I like a rope of black licorice? I'm not a huge fan of licorice, but it seemed rude to say no. The immediate problem was that my arms were full of chicken, so I had her put it in my mouth. Ergo, there will now be any of a number of pictures of me not only holding chickens, but with black licorice sticking out of my mouth. Hey, it was St. Stupid's Day, right? Seemed a perfect way to honor the holiday.

Of course, the chickens endeared themselves to me, and now I want one for a pet. The owner told me they're dirt cheap to buy, just a few dollars for a chick, and I've always liked the idea of a pet I can take with me out into the world. Unfortunately, my lack of easy yard access makes it impractical at best—they need to be outside part of the day, and my life is way too busy to commit to that. It's one of the reasons I don't have a dog. Besides, Perdita's plenty of responsibility, and given what a predator she is to Sharpie pens and catnip mice and the ever-fearsome blanket monst0r, a small bird running around the apartment wouldn't have a chance.

Presently, another girl came up to me and asked if the story I told at The Dark Room the night before was true. This is one of the reasons why I try not to let unresponsive audiences get to me; just because they aren't laughing or otherwise audibly reacting, that doesn't mean they aren't paying attention. The subject matter (play piercing) was difficult for her because she has a major fear of needles, but she rode it out. One of the reasons the story wasn't hurtful (her word) was that I told it entirely from my point of view, that I described the subjective sensation of blacking out rather than simply saying that it happened. It was really sweet of her and I appreciated the feedback, especially considering the trouble the story has gotten me into on that level.

The event ended around two, and I walked back to Embarcadero Station and hopped on the N-Judah. Then I blacked out. (No! No, I didn't.) Standing in the doorway across from my seat (I was on the bench next to the curbside doors, headphones on) were three kids. One of them was leaning against the doors looking in my general direction, and the othert two were facing him, their backs to me. The one facing my direction regarding me briefly, started to smile, then leaned to the others and said something. With no pretense towards surreption, the other two turned and looked right at me, laughing. (you're A MAN, man!) They got off right before my stop.

The birthday party was in full swing when I arrived, and I stayed for about an hour or so before my social anxiety really kicked into gear. I was among friends and colleagues (if I may use that most pretentious of words), but as I had been all day long, I was feeling like an outsider, like I wasn't at all belonging. If not there, where? Not helping was the fact that I was feeling a little wasted, and when I talked, I was somewhat babbly and incoherent. (At least one person learned that it's best not to try to get me to agree that small children are cute, because I will graphically describe horrible things happening to the no-necked monsters.)

After waiting five minutes for an outbound N-Judah to take me to my car, I started walking. I wanted to be home now. Back to my car, anyway, which would be an important step. It also presented its own issues, not the least of which being that I was feeling a little afraid of returning to my car. Of course those guys wouldn't be out waiting for me, nor was it likely that they'd be in the window again, but the thought still spooked me. Not a single train appeared as I walked the thirty-odd blocks, the temperature dropping and the wind starting to pick up (though no hint of rain, thankfully). I felt exposed and vulnerable and all but swore never to wear fishnets with a short dress again. They were nowhere to be seen as I got into my car, which itself seemed unmolested, but I wonder how comfortable I'll be parking on the block in the future.

Vash came over a little while after I got home, and we went to a fantastic vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Coincidental to the earlier events of the day, they have the best veggie chicken ever. And everything's always a little better with Vash around.

11:27pm

It's not enough that we already broke the stupid rain record, but it has to go and be like this for at least another two weeks. It actually makes me happy that we set the clocks forward this morning; I'd rather it be rainy and light than rainy and dark. And, yeah, I know this is nothing compared to what it's like in other places. Y'know what? That's why I don't live there. Portland was a neat city and I enjoyed visiting it last November, but I can imagine dealing with the weather. San Francisco's climate is one of the myriad of things I love about it. Ergo, I bitch about it. Bitch bitch bitch. And speaking of whining San Franciscans, I downloaded (arrr!) and watched the San Francisco-bashing episode of South Park. Pretty funny, and while one of my neighbors does drive a hybrid, in this town SUVs outnumbered them by at least twenty to one. (My real objection to SUVs is that they take up parking spaces which would be better filled by crappy little lapis blue Neons.) All things considered, it didn't hold a candle to Jim Goad's classic anti-San Francisco rant.

I did venture into the rain this evening to host Bad Movie Night at The Dark Room. There, I belong.